Filmmaker James Cameron has hired science fiction novelist Steven Charles Gould to write four novels, one for each of his four “Avatar” films.

Gould is currently the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the author of “Jumper,” which was made into a film directed by Doug Liman in 2008.

For the last five weeks, Gould has been in a writers room in Los Angeles with Cameron, Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver and Shane Salerno, the four screenwriters developing the remaining three “Avatar” films.

“I feel a little bit like Cinderella at the ball,” Gould told the Journal. “Scratch that, I feel a lot like Cinderella at the ball.”

Gould, who normally resides in Albuquerque, called the Journal during a quick break from the “Avatar” writers room to discuss the film’s connection to “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” his breakfast with Cameron and how he plans to deviate from the films.

The Wall Street Journal: How’d you get the job of turning four “Avatar” screenplays into novels?

Steven Charles Gould: I received a dumbfounded call from my literary agent in early May who said they received the most extraordinary call. It was Cameron’s people asking for a meeting. I flew out and it was supposed to be two-hour meeting and we ended up talking for three hours. I geeked out in the sense that there have been 12 people to walk on the moon but only 3 people who have been to the bottom of the Challenger Deep. I asked him a lot of questions about that. That may have helped me [get the job]. I had the right questions.

What’s the publishing schedule for the books?

Right now we’re working on the overall stories, and at a certain point the three screenwriting teams will go off to work on their individual screenplays. At that point I’ll start on book one. But I pretty much have to turn in a book every August for the next four years. The first one I’ll work on in a big way now so by the time I finish it, we should have shooting scripts for all three movies. But like his movies, I’m definitely sure Jim Cameron is going to have final cut as well.

There’s no publisher associated with these books.

Not yet. But I’m quite happy with my participation agreement. It’s kind of refreshing. Plus, I have an existing writing career. The novelizations will be structured in a way that gives me a significant head start to get in a couple novels of my own.

What liberties do you have to make these novels your own? I’d imagine novelizing screenplays could go awry rather quickly if you are not adding your own take.

In the past I’ve been a seat-of-the-pants writer, I write like I like to read, to discover what is going to happen next as I’m writing. With these books, I am going to know the major beats and major structure before I even start writing the first chapter. But I think Jim is think quite open to additional plot lines that are in parallel or have to have stories that are literally completely not in the original movie, but be able to be in parallel.

How do you mean “in parallel?”

It’s like weaving through the events. Sunday night I’m going to San Diego to watch ”Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” which is all about weaving between the events of “Hamlet.” There’s a lot of possibility there but most important is that I get the voices of the existing characters right. I’m a little bit nervous.

It sounds as if you have carte blanche to poke around all the source materials?

Pretty much. I’m working off the film a great deal, I even have a shooting script, which is the script as they actually filmed with. A large portion of the first movie was created in the editing process in a big big way. There’s also hundreds of pages of notes, full sets of books about that world, and the science and anthropology and plant and animal life. It’s crazy.